Blue Skies: Microsoft Xbox 360 hooks up with Sky

At a recent press event in London, Microsoft, UK chief Neil Thompson said that the Xbox 360 denotes "an entertainment experience that was 360 degrees, as wide-ranging and broad for consumers as we could possibly create."

This autumn, Xbox Live subscribers in the UK and Ireland shall have their wet dreams fulfilled. They will have access to the first Live television service designed for the XBox 360 anywhere on the planet.

The Sky Player service currently allows subscribers to watch live and on demand programming on the Internet, and the Xbox setup will be similar. You won't need a Sky dish, or any other equipment. You won't have to be an existing Sky customer either, according to the BBC. However, Sky customers with multiple set-top boxes could get the content on their Xbox at a discount.

At the time of writing, specific prices and channel line-ups retain some of the air of mystery over the potential awesomeness of the service, but we do know it will involve Live football, and a good smattering of television programming, news, and movies. As for the visual quality of the content, live content will come in at standard definition, and on-demand will be "DVD quality" says Sky.

Households with multiple televisions who share Sky will need a multiroom package so that one person can watch one program on a television in the living room, while another person watches something else on their Xbox 360 in the bedroom.

Xbox Live users watching sports content also get a cute little avatar, and the group can chat or hurl insults at others while watching the game "together" in groups of up to 8. Voice-on-voice action with headsets is an alternative, seeing that verbal communication is so last year.